Reviews and News about British, European and Translated crime fiction, tv and film.

Monday, August 06, 2007

The Exception by Christian Jungersen

After reading the final Harry Potter I was worried about what to read next. What could I get equally absorbed in? I'm off work until Wednesday and so not having to worry about what will fit in my rucksack I chose 'The Exception' by Christian Jungersen, which was shortlisted for the 2006 International Dagger. I have the hardback and the size and weight of it has been putting me off but I'm now quite a way into it and finding it fascinating.

Synopsis:A bestseller throughout Europe, THE EXCEPTION is a gripping dissection of the nature of evil and of the paranoia and obsessions that drive ordinary people to commit unthinkable acts.Four women work together for a small nonprofit in Copenhagen that disseminates information on genocide. When two of them receive death threats, they immediately believe that they are being stalked by Mirko Zigic, a Serbian torturer and war criminal, whom they have recently profiled in their articles.As the tensions mount among the women, their suspicions turn away from Zigic and toward each other. The threats increase and soon the office becomes a battlefield in which each of the women’s move is suspect. Their obsession turns into a witch hunt as they resort to bullying and victimization.Yet these are people who daily analyze cases of appalling cruelty on a worldwide scale, and who are intimate with the psychology of evil. The cruelty which the women have described from a safe distance is now revealed in their own world. They discover that none of them is exactly the person she seems to be. And then they learn that Interpol has traced Mirko Zigic to Denmark.